Mac Forum / General / General / October 2005

Mac Owners Support Group
~ An Apple User Group ~
URL: http://MacOSG.com

I don't know about the specific topics you mention, but historically,
most of the action
goes on in mailing lists, and groups whose names don't have 'mac' in
them. Go for the
topic, and see what the Mac (versus Windoze) presence is. For example,
in many of the
image-related groups, you've got a lot of average PC users; in others,
you've got the Mac
people.

Mailing lists are big, as far as Mac users go. Start at
<http://lists.apple.com>.

How professional is the project?
Apple has made low-end work easy and you can use anything. And there
are certainly stepped offering for editors, all of which get fine
reviews and commentary.
As far as recorder controlling and finer issues of output, I suggest
you go to a magazine site. No point getting anecdotal evidence when the
details can be more important.

I'm quite happy with the LaCie 250 GB Porsche drive I got. I'll get
another. They were selling for US$170 last year. Not Firewire 800 in
this model, though, only 400.

You'll find that lots of pro musician sites are well-informed about
using Mac. I also suggest web sites rather than newsgroups, start with
the magazine sites.
In other words, don't restrict that interest to Mac; it's main subject
is the music.

For video editing software you have three choices. iMovie, Final Cut Express,
and Final Cut Pro. All are made by Apple. iMovie is fine for personal
projects like birthdays, vacations, etc. It does sometimes have some bugs,
mostly minor, depending on which ones you end up getting, if any. Most people
have no bugs, but YMMV. Yahoo has a newsgroup where people who write books
for iMovie hang out. If you want to use iMovie, this is a good place to
search for past answers in the archives, or post questions if you can't find
the answer in the archives. The list name is: iMovie-List within Yahoo
Groups. iMovies pros are low cost and ease of use, low learning curve. Cons
are some bugs.

Final Cut Pro is a professional grade AV editing program. It is expensive,
and has a steep learning curve. But not many bugs. Commercial films have been
made entirely with this product. Final Cut Express is a lite version,
somewhat cheaper, with reduced functionality.

Hardware. I've made a 1.5 hour movie of a trip to Antartica using just iMovie
and a 366mhz G3 iBook. So pretty much any modern Mac hardware will work. When
adding special effects, and burning to a dvd, the slower the hardware, the
longer it takes to accomplish the task. For example, each second of video
footage has 30 still frames. So when you add a title to the opening sequence,
the machine has to render the changes to each frame of each second. Burning a
30 minute movie to dvd can take hours. So get the fastest hardware you can
afford, and make sure that you have equipment that will do what you want. For
movies that I make I edit them in iMovie, then export them back to a digital
camera. Then I make copies from the camera to either vhs or a dvd burner.
Most people like to burn to dvd directly from their Mac. For this you will
need the program iDvd, and and it is best to have a machine that has an
original equipment dvd burner. If you don't have iDvd and an original
equipment dvd burner, you can still burn to dvds, but you will need Toast,
and an external dvd burner. iDvd will not work with most external dvd
burners.

There are several HD manufacturers around. I buy Seagate products, because
their stuff is fast, quiet, and has a five year warranty. No other
manufacturer has this long of a warranty. The enclosure, if it is purchased
separately, is of less concern, as long as it has the correct type of
connections. USB, USB 2.0, firewire, etc.

Check out Apple's Garage Band software. You'll like it.